


You Were My New Dream

by shadow_prince



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Anxiety, Break Up, Depression, First War with Voldemort, Heartbreak, Hopeful Ending, If You Squint - Freeform, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Break Up, Self-Harm, questionable use of alcohol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 20:24:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17432927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_prince/pseuds/shadow_prince
Summary: Do you ever miss me?Dark eyes went wide as a response came through almost instantly.I imagine you’ve already thought this through, but are you sure you want the answers to questions like these?Remus licked his lips, heart hammering painfully in his chest. He wrote back more slowly, but with confidence and surety this time. He needed to know.I hesitated for several minutes before finally writing it, wondering if I wanted the answer. But, yes.He watched with bated breath, rising from bed and crossing to the balcony, but never removing his eyes from the paper held like a priceless treasure in his hands. The first he had heard from Sirius in months and months. He lit a cigarette, taking a long drag as Sirius’ elegant scrawl danced across the page.





	You Were My New Dream

Some people say that they can feel when a storm is coming. An aching in their bones or a pounding in their head even though the sun is still shining, they can feel the clouds gathering on the horizon before they can see them.

Remus could feel it before it happened. He didn’t want to believe it though; everything was perfect with he and Sirius. Why would something go wrong? He had to be imagining it, and he pushed it from his thoughts. He wouldn’t create a problem where there wasn’t one. Everything would be fine. It had taken them time to get to where they were, and they had struggled and fought to be here together, but it was worth it. And now it was perfect, and Remus would fight tooth and nail to keep this. He would fight anyone who tried to get between him and Sirius.

“Something’s wrong.” Sirius frowned, his eyebrows drawn together and forehead wrinkled, he wasn’t meeting Remus’ eyes in the mirror they were using to communicate.

His blood ran cold and heart stopped. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure. Something’s wrong, but I don’t know what, and I don’t know how to fix it. Everything feels like too much. Like everyone around me is asking too much of me, even though it’s no different than they have before. I don’t even want to see James and Lily.” Sirius broke off, taking a deep breath, running his fingers through his hair in obvious aggravation. “I don’t know. It’ll be fine, I just need. I don’t know.” He looked at Remus finally, his eyes filled with pain.

“I know the Order is asking a lot of you, and James and Lily depend on you so much, just… take the time you need for you. I’ll be here. I’ll always be here. You call me when you can, but don’t… don’t force yourself to. I’ll be here but I can back off, and just.. let me know when we can talk.”

“It’s not you, Rem. It’s me, I just don’t know what’s wrong. Just overworked, I guess.”

Remus nodded, but still the storm grew closer, a heavy weight on his chest, threatening to choke him and deprive him of all the air he needed to live. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.” He smiled weakly and ended the call.

Their calls became less frequent, but still they owled back and forth, until even that seemed to be too much for Sirius. His messages were short and pained. Updates on Order missions and little else, and even that, that used to fill him with such joy and purpose, was forced and lacked any sort of interest or enthusiasm. It was as if his entire purpose and being, his liveliness and soul had been drained from him in the span of a few weeks. His once vibrant laughs and smiles, gestures filled with dramatics and sass were no more. 

Spring gave way to summer and Remus’ letters were more frequently left unanswered than answered. He alternated between understanding, compassionate, and devoted, to paranoid, frantic, and panicked. He drank himself into stupors, trying to quiet the thoughts and be too numb to notice he felt nothing but anxiety, and when even that failed, he took a silver dagger to the inside of his wrists. Scoring blistering shallow slashes from his wrist to his elbow; superficial enough to be no risk to his life, but with the intent of causing the most pain he could. A million paper-cuts that would hurt more the next day than the night before.

He had always had scars, and always hid his body. What were a few more? What were long sleeves in summer?

He didn’t want to be burden. He knew Sirius was going through too much as it was, and he didn’t want to add to that. James and Lily had Harry, and Sirius was pouring all his energy into making sure they didn’t realise he was in a bad way.

Remus learned that he would always receive an answer to the question, “alive?” But even those notes he spaced out, saved for the moments he was truly panicked Sirius might not be, or when he desperately needed to see his boyfriends handwriting. Often he lay awake, alone in bed, wondering if Sirius were to die, who it would be that remembered to tell him. James, he decided. James would remember him. 

Peter sent him updates regularly, casual notes of daily interactions of inconsequential value.

_ Sirius was at the party mate, sad you couldn’t make it. _

_ The trip to Brighten was a blast, Sirius said you were busy? _

_ How has your furry little problem been? Sirius has been telling us how he was never okay with it, but didn’t know how to break it to you. Are you two finished then? _

On a sweltering day in July, Remus stumbled back into his hotel room after a mission in a town he had never been before. He was drenched in sweat, and exhausted, but it was hardly noon. He had barely fallen into a chair when an owl flew in through the open window. He untied the letter from its leg, scanning the short message in James’ hasty scrawl. 

_ It’s Harry’s second birthday party today. We didn’t think you’d make it since it’s so far from home for you, but we found out you’re nearby for a mission. Lily will kill you if you don’t come, she’s saving a slice of cake for you. _

_ We want you here, mate. _

The address at the bottom was less than two hours away. Remus staggered out the door and into the rented car without even bothering to change clothes. The party started in an hour and a half, and he had a long drive ahead of him.

James enveloped him in a hug before he even made it into the room. Lily kissed his cheek and repeated over and over how happy she was that he was there. Harry shrieked and laughed, wobbling on unsteady legs as Peter chased him animatedly. Mr. and Mrs. Potter both smiled tiredly, but hugged him warmly expressing their sincere happiness that he had driven all the way to be there with the family for the party.

Sirius never showed up.

Remus flew home the next morning, and didn’t bother to mention it. He knew he’d receive no response. A few weeks later, he penned a letter, asking Sirius how he was and begging for clarity of their situation. Needing to know where they stood, but hardly under any impression any longer that the answer would be good.

It was no less heart breaking when he got the short message back saying that he guessed they were nothing, and that it wasn’t like this was fair to Remus.

He had no time to mourn the loss of his love, as his mother passed tragically, and he was forced to play the role of mourning son. Guilt wracked him at night as he lay awake, a sharp pain in his chest and gasping for breath, riddled with the knowledge that the pain was for Sirius more often than for his loving mother.

Remus volunteered for increasingly difficult and dangerous Order missions. What did it matter anyway? Better he do it than someone with someone waiting for them at home who loved them. The days passed slowly, but they passed nonetheless. On the rare occasion he drunkenly contacted James, he was met with profound sympathy and apology for his brother’s behaviour, but it didn’t make it hurt less, and Remus didn’t want the sympathy. So eventually he stopped contacting James as well.

Winter was bitter cold, and even though he never believed Peter’s messages, couldn’t wrap his head around the possibility, it became easier to believe the lie than try to work out the truth of the muddled situation. He tried to hate Sirius, with every fibre of his being. He had every right to, and every reason, it shouldn’t have been a problem. 

But every time he tried to tell himself that Sirius didn’t accept him for who he was, he remembered lying in bed together, Sirius tracing his scars. Sirius whispering his name through the panic attacks and telling him he was loved, that he was enough, that he was human, that he was worthy. Moments that Peter could never have known. So he stayed in limbo - unable to find it in himself to believe Peter, nor to hate Sirius.

He drug his feet through the winter. He spoke to no one, and he drank and smoke, but he learned to be fine on his own.

(Whenever he used to tell Sirius he was ‘fine’ Sirius would smile and tell him ‘okay, but I want you to be more than fine. I want more than that for you.’)

Competent, people called him. He could do everything alone, he needed no one. The pain was no longer suffocating, but he knew with a certainty he couldn’t place that he would never again smile like he had with Sirius.

He was laying on his bed after work, trying to find the energy to get up and eat (Merlin only knew when he last had, because he sure didn’t) when an owl landed on his chest, dropping a letter.

_ I know I can never make amends for what happened between us, but I’m truly sorry that I couldn’t be there for you, truly sorry that I wasn’t strong enough to be there for both of us. You certainly deserved better, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t deal with that guilt. I just wanted you to know that. _

Remus crumpled the paper and threw it across the room. Refusing to retrieve it from the corner where it landed and waving the owl away in frustration. He stormed into the kitchen and poured a firewhiskey, downing it in one go. He clenched his fists and hung his head, his chest on fire with righteous indignation. How dare he write to him now. How dare he apologise when Remus already struggled to be angry. How dare he contact him when Remus was finally making it through the day, finally succeeding in a job, finally speaking to people. 

The note stayed there, untouched.

When Peter emerged as a traitor some months later, it was hardly even surprising, and dealt no blow to Remus. The only thing he wondered, was what other lies he had told.

He knew he had work the next morning, but he didn’t care much as he drained the bottle of cheap wine, enjoying the warm breeze blowing in through the balcony. Spring was giving way to summer again, and he found himself looking forward to a bit of warmth, for once. He lay awake in bed, the window open and room spinning. It was past 2am and he should really try and get some sleep before he had to be up again, but he hardly cared.

Fumbling in his nightstand, he found the charmed parchment they used to use in class, slightly disappointed with himself that he knew exactly where it was after all this time. He doubted Sirius still had the matching one, but even with that doubt in his mind he hesitated, quill hovering for a dozen long minutes as he weighed how crushed he would be when Sirius inevitably didn’t answer.

Finally, he plunged. Scrawling hastily, messily, painfully,

_ Do you ever miss me? _

Dark eyes went wide as a response came through almost instantly.

_ I imagine you’ve already thought this through, but are you sure you want the answers to questions like these? _

Remus licked his lips, heart hammering painfully in his chest. He wrote back more slowly, but with confidence and surety this time. He needed to know.

_ I hesitated for several minutes before finally writing it, wondering if I wanted the answer. But, yes. _

He watched with bated breath, rising from bed and crossing to the balcony, but never removing his eyes from the paper held like a priceless treasure in his hands. The first he had heard from Sirius in months and months. He lit a cigarette, taking a long drag as Sirius’ elegant scrawl danced across the page.

_ I only miss you everyday. _

**Author's Note:**

> [If this seems familiar, I posted it drunk back in September and pulled it the next morning cause I don't usually write angst without a happy ending. But, I've decided I do want to share it with the world after all.]
> 
> Thank you for reading, comments always appreciated xx


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